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    Dive Bomber!: Aircraft, Technology, and Tactics in World War II
    Dive Bomber!: Aircraft, Technology, and Tactics in World War II
    Dive Bomber!: Aircraft, Technology, and Tactics in World War II
    Ebook511 pages5 hours

    Dive Bomber!: Aircraft, Technology, and Tactics in World War II

    By Peter C. Smith

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    About this ebook

    Details on planes like the German Stuka, the American Dauntless, the Japanese Aichi D3A1 "Val," the Soviet PE-2, and numerous others. Riveting accounts of aerial combat. Includes maps, diagrams, tables, and photos.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherStackpole Books
    Release dateMar 10, 2008
    ISBN9780811748421
    Dive Bomber!: Aircraft, Technology, and Tactics in World War II

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      Only about British dive bombers. Inconsistent. No technical information. No effort to discuss war propaganda and historical distortion. No comparison made between different aircraft. incomplete.

    Book preview

    Dive Bomber! - Peter C. Smith

    CHAPTER 1

    Early Experiments

    The Genesis and Practice

    of Low-Level Attack,

    1910–18

    In trying to trace the origins of dive bombing, one is immediately faced with a mass of conflicting evidence. Just as it is almost impossible to find anyone who agrees on the diving angle at which dive bombing begins, so no two historians agree on who invented this method of attacking surface targets. The majority of published sources conclude that the U.S. Marine Corps should be given the credit. My own research suggests that this widely held belief is false, and my case is set out in the following chapters.

    No study of dive bombing can exclude the concept of low-level attack in general. The two are so intertwined, especially in the formative years, that a basic outline of low-level bombing is essential for a complete understanding of dive bombing. I do not, however, intend to look closely at ground-attack aircraft and methods, but only to record those initial operations and experiments from which dive bombing evolved. For those seeking further information on ground attack, there are several excellent books on the subject.

    What angle of dive is required for true dive bombing? This is perhaps the most vexing question of all and that which provokes the most discord. The British Air Ministry produced three definitions, all of which were accepted by other nations at one stage or another. Shallow glide bombing: the bombs are released while the aircraft descends at an angle not greater than 20 degrees. Steep glide bombing: the bombs are released while the aircraft descends at an angle of between 20 and 60 degrees. Dive bombing: the bombs are released while the aircraft dives at an angle of between 60 and 90 degrees.

    But to confine these studies to operations meeting only the third definition would exclude a number of significant developments. For example, perhaps the most famous dive bombing attack by a British force was the sinking of the German light cruiser Königsberg. Under the RAF’s rules, we would have to ignore this watershed completely, since the Fleet Air Arm (FAA) Skuas that carried out this daring and successful assault approached at angles between 40 and 70 degrees. Again, can one ignore the operations by aircraft designed solely as dive bombers, but which were in fact carried out in the traditional ground-attack manner, as with the U.S. Marine Corps’ SBD missions in the Philippines in 1945? Overlap is unavoidable. Hardly known as a dive bomber, the British Spitfire carried out important sorties in this role, diving at angles above the 60-degree mark. The prewar RAF tested the Fairey Battle and even the Hand-ley Page Hampden at angles of 30 to 40 degrees to see how they would perform as dive bombers.

    Who invented dive bombing? The most accurate answer is probably that of historian Lee M. Pearson, who said, No one knows who first turned his plane nose down and dove nearly into the ground to hit a pinpoint target with bombs. There are still books that claim that the U.S. Navy invented dive bombing in the 1920s, but we can dismiss such assertions as parochial wishful thinking rather than history.

    Although an earlier reference to the issue of a dive bombing patent on December 9, 1911, in Great Britain to Alexander von Willisch of Wilmersdorf was investigated, examination revealed it to be a red herring. More significant was the subsequent issue of Patent No. 15,871 on July 9, 1914, to Henri Coanda. This French engineer filed a patent for what was, in fact, an automatic bomb-or projectile-discharging tube designed particularly for air attacks on ground targets. Although clearly not specific to dive bombing, this so-called complete means for discharging projectiles from aerial machines is of great interest as a pioneering ground-attack system. It was probably far too heavy and cumbersome for application to aircraft of that period, but it was a far-sighted effort at a time when bombs were often dropped by hand.

    A more primitive means of enabling the missile to reach its target from the sky was being practiced in the Mexican Civil War (1913–15). An American aviator, Leonard W. Bonney, was scouting around Mexico City, Yucatan, and Tampico using a Moisant aircraft. But he by no means restricted himself to scouting and has one of the best claims to be the father of the dive bombing technique. He carried out bombing missions with spherical dynamite bombs designed by Mexican engineers. The explosive was fired by a pin, which exploded a rifle cartridge.

    His usual method of attack was to fly at between 1,200 and 1,600 feet to avoid clouds. He thus learned the major lesson of aircraft vulnerability, for his machine was frequently shot up by rifle fire. He returned from one trip with eleven bullet holes in his aircraft and a severed spark plug wire. But it is the eyewitness descriptions of his bomb-dropping methods that are of the greatest interest, for they state quite clearly that Bonney dropped his bombs himself at the end of a dive, before he leveled out and that he employed no sighting or other device to assist in this.

    Early in World War I, the French War Office reconnoitered the German airship hangars at Metz in preparation for their destruction. When the attacking aircraft arrived over the target, its engine failed at 8,000 feet. Some quick thinking followed, and according to a contemporary account, the pilot, not wishing to fall before executing his mission, volplaned—i.e., descended by glidiing without the engine—and while doing so, he dropped his bombs. Smoke from antiaircraft fire obscured the results, but it was believed at the time that the French pilot had hit his mark.

    One of the most daring and successful of these early attacks was carried out by Flight Lieutenant R. L. G. Marix of the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) against the Zeppelin shed at Düsseldorf on October 8, 1914. Piloting a Sopwith Tabloid, one of the most advanced aircraft of the period, Marix took off from Antwerp armed with 20-pound bombs and arrived over the sheds in misty conditions. Once in position, he dived to an altitude of only 600 feet and released his Cooper bombs. Direct hits were scored, and the shed collapsed, with the flames rising to a height of 500 feet. Despite a barrage of defensive fire, Marix managed to withdraw safely from the target, although his aircraft was hit. This brilliant attack was later found to have resulted in the destruction of the new Zeppelin Z-IX, which had only just been completed and placed in the shed.

    A contemporary assessment of the raid concluded that the results showed the advantages of Marix’s approach and, therefore, that aircraft had to descend at a perilous attitude to achieve accuracy.

    The same methods were used with similar success in an attack the following month, again by the Royal Naval Air Service. The aircraft used were Avro 504s belonging to a special unit formed at Manchester. Carrying four 20-pound Cooper bombs in improvised racks mounted under their lower mainplanes, the four aircraft flew 120 miles from Belfort to the Zeppelin sheds at Friedrichshafen, Lake Constance, on November 21. Although one aircraft had to turn back, the remaining three—piloted by Squadron Commander E. F. Briggs (873), Flight Lieutenant S. V. Sippe (874), and Flight Commander J. T. Babington (875)—continued to the target. After a low-level approach across the lake, at five miles from the target they climbed to 1,200 feet to deploy for the bombing run. Once in position, the three aircraft dived down to about 700 feet and released their bombs. One bomb failed to release, but all the others fell within an area of 700 yards around the works and sheds. Two fell on the sheds themselves, one greatly damaging a Zeppelin under construction; a gas works was also destroyed.

    As early as December 1914, a writer in a British magazine was discussing the merits of diving attacks as a means of achieving accuracy, arguing that when gliding from a height, with the aircraft under power, the tangent to the trajectory and the axis of the machine would gradually become parallel and therefore accuracy of aim would be increased when flying low and at high speed. He concluded that for the best results, the bomb should be released at the end of a dive of 500 feet, right when the axis of the aircraft was pointing at the target.

    That diving attacks were far from rare is illustrated by the following journalistic reports describing sorties of this kind:

    French and British pilots did some very daring bomb dropping in the first year of the war. Arriving over their objectives, they dive to a height counted by a few hundreds of feet with engines full on, reaching almost incredible speeds as speeds were then regarded, and releasing their bombs at what they thought the crucial moment before making the best of their way out of the danger zone.

    An English warplane hovered over Zeebrugge and, defying the concentrated fire, made a sudden dive to within 300 feet of the ground... the airman coolly dropped his bombs at short range on a submarine moored alongside the mole.

    Despite the above examples, it was not dive bombing that developed as the principal aerial tactic of World War I, but rather strafing, low-level ground-support missions by fighters and light bombers. Although it was again the British who first developed this form of warfare and later perfected it with great effect, Germany, France, and later the U.S. all experimented with the method and made extensive and effective use of it during 1916–18.

    Perhaps the first indication of this use was contained in a memo originated at Royal Flying Corps (RFC) headquarters in October 1914 and sent to Major Musgrave: Several instances have occurred lately in which targets suitable for attack have been passed over without any action being taken. In future all aeroplanes carrying out reconnaissances will carry bombs and whenever suitable targets... present themselves they should be attacked by dropping bombs.

    The momentum soon increased. A directive from the same source in February 1915 stated: Accuracy to within fifty yards is essential. If it cannot be obtained from heights of 5,000 to 6,000 feet, the target must be attacked at low level—500 feet.

    From the time of the Somme offensive (1916) onward, the mass use of fighters for strafing missions had become firmly established. The results were often spectacular, as with No. 43 Squadron during the Third Battle of the Scarpe on May 3, 1917.

    One historian noted how, at the battles of Ypres and Cambrai in 1917, strafing had become a significant factor in the fighting. This was emphasized by the part the fighter-bombers played in breaking up the German offensive that began in March 1918, when the RFC’s attacks often prevented the British retreat from becoming a rout.

    Nor were the Germans slow in adopting such measures, and at Verdun in March 1916, their own scouts were employed in a similar manner. Formed into special Schlachtstaffeln, the German scouts were used en masse during the 1918 breakthrough. The Germans also developed special aircraft with armor protection for low-level attacks, an idea that the British copied after the war with the Salamander.

    When the fledgling U.S. Air Corps arrived on the Western Front, General Billy Mitchell was profoundly impressed by these methods and formed strafing units, which made their debut at the St. Mihiel salient in the summer of 1918.

    Farther afield, the British gave striking demonstrations of the potency of this form of attack against unprepared troops, and three of the most notable incidents took place at the end of the war. The Turkish troops trapped in the defile northeast of Nablus on September 21, 1918, were subjected to five hours of concentrated strafing, at the end of which they had become a dispersed horde of trembling individuals, hiding for their lives. The armies of Austro-Hungary broke and fled after the battle of Vittorio Veneto, and a similar retribution overtook them on October 29–30, 1918, when their fleeing columns were caught on the Conegliano-Pordonone road. Finally, again on September 21, 1918, the ill-fated Bulgarian Army met the same fate in Macedonia’s Kosturino Pass.

    As effective as this form of attack proved to be, it was also extremely expensive to the attacker in terms of men and machines. Wing Commander Slessor made this very point between the wars when explaining in a series of lectures just why the RAF was at that time no longer interested in following such a policy in future wars. He said that at Cambrai casualties in the British strafing squadrons averaged about 30 percent per day, and similarly ghastly losses were incurred during the low-flying attacks carried out during the March retreat and the Amiens offensive of 1918. He cited the example of No. 80 Squadron in 1918, which he said was almost continuously in action from the beginning of the March retreat until the armistice in November. Their average strength was twenty-two officers, and during those final ten months of combat, no fewer than 168 officers were struck off the strength from all causes, an average of about 75 percent per month.

    It is therefore obvious why the policy lost its appeal after the war. Its fall from favor was accelerated by the embracing of Hugh Trenchard’s conception of future warfare, which the British general saw as being won by the heavy bomber unaided by armies or navies. This doctrine, the cornerstone of interwar RAF policy, saw little need for any kind of ground-attack capability. The dive bomber, although not strictly a ground attacker, suffered for the same reasons.

    Nonetheless, the RFC and the infant RAF had done much to test the dive bombing concept in the latter stages of World War I, even if they subsequently turned away from it.

    CHAPTER 2

    Birth of the Dive Bomber

    British Pioneering Work, 1915–18

    The number of individuals claiming to have originated the dive bombing form of attack is probably exceeded only by the number of nations and air services claiming that honor. Some of the British pilots who flew on the Western Front have described in their memoirs how they used diving techniques for bombing attacks, and they have as good a case as anyone.

    One of these was Lieutenant Duncan Grinnell-Milne, who was flying BE2cs with No. 16 Squadron from Lys in France in the early winter of 1915. The BE2c was to gain an unenviable distinction in the months ahead, when heavy losses earned it a reputation as the main course of Fokker fodder (a reference to German planes man ufactured by the Fokker company). A single 70-horsepower Renault engine pulled this two-seat biplane through the air at a stately 72 miles per hour. Though these were still early days for bombers, the aircraft was fitted to carry two 112-pound or ten 20-pound bombs under the wings. Aiming these weapons was a hit-or-miss affair, and No. 16 Squadron was given the task of trying out a newly developed bomb sight in the hope of improving matters. Grinnell-Milne took off on his bombing mission on November 27, 1915, after a mere two days’ instruction on this rather complicated apparatus. The target was known to be well defended by antiaircraft guns. The new sight demanded a straight and level run in, but on arriving over the target, he found a throng of aircraft jostling for position and being heavily fired on. Grinnell-Milne therefore decided to adopt his own method.

    Putting his aircraft into a dive with the engine at half throttle, he lined up on the target, a rail junction. He dived from 10,000 feet to 2,000 feet and released the bombs, missing the target but hitting motor transport instead. He returned that afternoon, when the sky over the target proved to be less crowded. Nonetheless he attacked in the same way as before, this time pressing in much closer. The first bomb hit a building, and he circled the area before diving to drop the second. I watched the bomb go down, diminishing rapidly to a pinpoint, then suddenly expanding again as it struck a building in the goods yard. A flash, bricks and dust, and lots of slow-spreading smoke... I flew home humming a tune.

    The results of these attacks, in which the RFC dropped four tons of bombs on one small railway station in the course of its biggest raid yet, were in fact very disappointing. But the raid showed the advantages of dive bombing versus level bombing. Only if a specific target could be located and pinpointed were the results worth the effort, and the destruction of an ammunition dump, ship, or Zeppelin required a degree of accuracy which only dive bombing could provide.

    BE2c aircraft of No. 13 Squadron lined up on their airfield in France. This improbable mount saw some of the first experimental dive bomb ing experiments in combat during World War I.

    Another attack deserves mention. Lieutenant Arthur Gould Lee, flying with No. 46 Squadron from Izel-le-Hameau, west of Arras gave a graphic description of an attack he carried out on November 30. He had to attack one particular house in the village of Bourlon with four 20-pound Cooper bombs. The original plan called for four separate attacks dropping one bomb each time, but the flak proved too heavy for that to be attempted. Instead, Lee went into an attack down to 200 feet in a steep dive into the concentration of fire. His first attempt resulted in a near-miss by himself and his wing-man, and Lee had to return for a second attempt alone.

    This time his steep dive was carried down to 100 feet, and the remaining three bombs were released at this height. He made his escape at the suicidal height of 20 feet and, despite the opposition, escaped with but one bullet which shattered the handle of his throttle control, while another almost ignited his Verey pistol cartridges.

    These then are typical examples of unofficial dive bombing attacks. But in my opinion the strongest claim is held by 2nd Lieutenant William Henry Brown, RFC, who staked his claim with No. 84 Squadron in France in March 1918. The attack is well-documented and was, significantly in the light of what was to come, directed against a ship target of sorts.

    No. 84 was operating standard offensive patrols (OPs) with the SE5a fighter from Flez near St. Quentin. The SE5a was an unlikely contender at first sight for a dive bomber, but as one historian later recalled, it was a very versatile fighter, both strong and capable of being dived steeply.

    Experiments were conducted early in March to ascertain the most accurate methods of utilizing this machine as a bomber, and Brown, being the smallest pilot in his unit, was the volunteer. No bombsight was utilized and the target was a 100-foot circle. He used wooden bombs and found that with a diving attack he could hit the circle every time. On March 14, 1918, he was allocated a live target, four ammunition barges located on a canal near Bernot.

    The mission was described as Special Mission (Low Bombing Attack) in No. 84 Squadron’s combat reports, and his SE5a (No. 5384) was equipped with four Cooper bombs to perform the task. Early morning mist delayed the sortie until midday, and it was still foggy when he finally got airborne. Nonetheless, only twenty minutes flying time sufficed to bring him to his target from his base. At Bois de Savy he climbed to 5,000 feet and soon reached Bernot and the barges. He made two dives and scored near-misses each time. The third attempt was different: I dived straight for the barge. His bombs struck it amidships from a release height of 500 feet and it exploded very satisfactorily indeed. Within a week all his squadron had been similarly equipped and, added one magazine, a new word was added to the vocabulary of aerial warfare... dive bombing.

    The arguments about which pilot, squadron or nation invented dive bombing will undoubtedly continue into the future. But it can be claimed with complete confidence that it was the RAF (formed in April 1918 from a merger of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service) that carried out the first air tests of the new method under carefully controlled conditions, at the RAF Armament Experimental Station early in 1918. The RAF’s subsequent vigorous opposition to the dive bomber tends to obscure the fact that it was Britain that first conducted controlled tests of the method. For example, one historian states clearly:

    Another interesting manifestation of the Camel was as the world’s first dive bomber. The Camel had been so widely used for land attack that dive bombing seemed a logical development. Not many modifications were made to the Camel fighter which was tested in action. Some armor plating was added to protect the pilot from ground-fire. A mechanical airspeed indicator was fitted to the inter-plane struts to assist him in his attack.

    But the Sopwith Camel was not the only aircraft to be used in the trials, which took place at Orfordness. Lieutenant Brown’s exploit with his SE5a in March 1918 may or may not have been the first real combat dive bombing, but the type was actually used in dive bombing tests several significant weeks before his action.

    The work was carried out by Section 6, under Captain C. E. Fairburn, with Major B. M. Jones as chief experimental officer. Five different pilots were employed on this series, one of them being Oliver Stewart, who subsequently explained why the Sopwith fighter, with its reputation as a killer of inexperienced pilots, should have been chosen as a test-bed for such experiments: The Camel set a new standard in powers of maneuver, and even today it probably remains the most highly maneuverable aeroplane that has ever been seen. Fine praise from a veteran pilot for a plane that almost killed him on the lonely Suffolk shoreline during these tests.

    For the first tests the SE5a was employed. A small yellow flag was planted in the shingle as the target. A bomb rack was fitted under the left-hand wing of the aircraft and four dummy bombs were carried on each flight. The placing of the bomb load off-centre now appears strange, but it was done to avoid interference with the flying gear and this position was simplest. Further tests were carried out later to find out whether the SE5a could more usefully accommodate such a bomb load centrally under the fuselage.

    Once in position over the target marker, the pilots were to dive their aircraft from about 1,500 feet at 110–130 miles per hour with the engine throttled back. The bomb was to be released at 800–1,000 feet. This seems quite high for the period and size of the bombs, but was no doubt determined by safety factors.

    It was found that the pilots adopted the following method. After a few preliminary dives to get the feel of it, they would look along the left side of the engine cowling while diving at the target, the bomb being released when the target just passed out of sight under the cowling. This method was used generally after the first few attempts and worked quite well.

    In all the tests the SE5a was dived upwind very approximate ly. The trials were run in varying weather and, particularly, wind conditions, again to give an average result. The tests produced no startling results, though fully 26 percent of the bombs fell within 10 yards of the target. No sight of any kind was used, and it was found that, as expected, the pilots’ shooting rapidly improved with practice.

    According to the report, these tables gave a good indication of the amount of practice needed to become moderately proficient in this form of bombing. The final verdict was that the lower the release the more accurate the bombing with the SE5a.

    Because the tests with the SE5a had been based on eye shooting only, it was suggested that the degree of accuracy, already impressive, would be much increased if the normal machine-gun sights were used in the dive to locate the target. Using the same target specified for the first tests, it was proposed that if a bomb be released from a Camel dived at about 160 miles per hour when the Aldis gunsight bears on the target a good aim will be obtained. It was specified that bomb-release height should not be more than 1,000 feet. The 130-horsepower Clerget-engined Camel was the version used by all the pilots in these second tests.

    Bomb racks were fitted one under each wing of the Camel and carrying one twenty-pound bomb each for the trial. It was decided not to place the racks under the front fuselage lest the bombs foul the undercarriage bracing wires. Placing the racks under the fuse-lage farther aft would have upset the trim too much.

    Three different pilots worked on these trials, dropping a total of twenty-eight bombs on the flag marker used for the SE5a tests. Once again, the pilots were chosen for their wide range of flying experience. The most experienced, Captain Stewart, had logged about 1,000 hours, his colleagues 600 and 250, respectively.

    The Aldis sight was used exclusively in the first tests, by Captain Stewart. On runs two, four, six, and eight, the Aldis was aimed well ahead of the target to compensate for the shortfall found to be common when using the sight thus.

    On the second of these runs, after the bomb had been released at 400 feet, the Camel suffered engine failure, crashing into the shingle and rolling over. Stewart survived the impact, but was left upside down in his straps for more than two hours, jammed in the cockpit, with petrol dripping on him before the rescue party could reach him.

    The most inexperienced pilot, No. 3, aimed at the target with the sight for every shot except for the last one, which proved to be the most accurate of all. This last bomb was dropped by eye in the manner of the SE5a tests.

    Pilot No. 2, seeing that the bombs would always fall short of the target when aimed with the Aldis sight, deliberately aimed well over, gradually increasing the distance of the aim-over all the time. The difference in bombing accuracy was immediately apparent.

    The three pilots reached the same conclusions:

    1. Dive bombing with the Aldis sight was very unsafe as a result of the high speed called for at a low height while carrying bombs, more especially if the air is at all bumpy. The use of the Aldis sight made the technique even more hazardous, preventing the pilot from getting a true impression of his closeness to the ground.

    2. It was far easier to drop the bombs in a vertical dive with no sight at all. It could be put to limited use, not by looking through it, but by sighting along the top of it. This method indicated the target quite well if the aircraft was directed straight at the target.

    3. At speeds of 120–130 miles per hour the sighted and unsighted methods were equally accurate, though the former required more practice. The sight was also found to require lower bomb-release heights and the safety factor was nowhere near as high.

    They concluded that use of the Camel with the Aldis sight was quite unsafe for an average pilot and that the results expected would not be worth the expenditure in machines and trained pilots. Thus RAF opposition to dive bombing was to be deeply set early on. They also stated that there was no advantage to be gained from using the Aldis sight at slower speeds than those specified, except in improving line errors by the pilot looking along the sight when approaching the target.

    These trials, although proving the greater accuracy of dive bombing, had the ultimate effect of turning the RAF against it. The service was convinced that use of the method in combat would lead to casualties for little return. In much the same way, wartime experience had turned the RAF against strafing, as the Slessor lectures of the 1930s were to confirm.

    By 1919, there was little RAF enthusiasm for any form of ground attack. Despite continued testing, and calls for specific aircraft to fulfill this role, dive bombing was relished least of all. This naturally affected army cooperation, and in the twenty years between the wars, the rift was to open into a chasm. One very distinguished general noted: Between the wars the former cooperation between the army and the air force, close, intimate and effective in the Great War, ceased when the air force became a separate service.

    This indifference to dive bombing was also to have a crippling effect on the Royal Navy. Control of all RN aircraft had passed to the RAF in 1918 and the allocation of funds to that part of the service meant that the Fleet Air Arm was very much a Cinderella in both aircraft and designs.

    Strangely enough, despite his experience during the trials, Stewart himself remained a dive bombing enthusiast. Over the years he was to become the major critic of the RAF’s neglect of the method, conducting a campaign that culminated in a series of pointed articles during 1942. He remained convinced that dive bombing was a valid and valuable method of attack at a time when the official line was very different.

    CHAPTER 3

    The Momentum Falters

    Immediate Postwar Developments,

    1919–22

    We have seen how by the end of World War I the air forces of the major powers were using aircraft to support their armies, mainly by means of ground-attack operations. This was true of Brit-ain, Germany, France, and the United States, though Britain was unique in studying dive bombing as such. But the end of a highly destructive war was followed by a strong reaction against all forms of warfare, armaments, and military experiments, leading to a heavy cutback in manpower, equipment, funds, and research.

    This applied to those powers that were allowed the rest of peace. But other nations were not so fortunate: in particular, Poland and the Soviet Union fought a murderous war in 1919–20 before Polish independence was secured. As this was more or less a continuation of World War I in that troubled area of Central Europe, the lessons were similar to those learned elsewhere in 1918. Both nations soon recognized the value and the appalling dangers of ground-support operations.

    Italy, influenced by the RAF’s example at Vittorio Veneto in 1918, made similar advances and followed the same road. In Germany the ban on all armaments, especially aircraft, simply acted as a spur, and the re-creation of an effective air force was soon underway. Dominated, as the new force was, by ex-army flyers, it is not surprising that close support found high favor. Ironically, it was at this low point in German fortunes that the first tentative moves were made, in Sweden and the Soviet Union, towards the Stuka of a decade later, the means by which a resurgent Germany turned the tables on the victors of 1918 in a campaign of only a few weeks duration.

    In America the situation was more complex. As in Britain, two strands of thought began to emerge: the naval, which favored dive bombing for accuracy, and the air force, which saw the heavy bomber as the decisive factor in any war. But this polarization did not take effect immediately, and it was the army air force that was to provide the spark, which rekindled the whole dive bomber fire.

    Immediately after the war France led the world in the development of some dive bombing techniques for use against warships. But this proved a flash in the pan, and although the French Navy maintained an interest in this method of attack, it was so short of funds and had so many obsolete warships to replace that little could be done to follow through her early postwar advances.

    Japan was in a similar state. Still nominally an ally of Britain, her growing designs on the Chinese mainland were rapidly drawing her into conflict with China and the Western powers. A British naval mission was, however, sent to Japan soon after the war to assist in the building up of Japanese naval air power, which was then almost nonexistent. This tuition was to come home to roost with a vengeance in the South China Sea twenty years later!

    This is the background to the years 1919–22. Let us now examine in more depth each nation’s problems and ideas in this period, to see how the seed began to germinate in some and was neglected in others.

    During the grim campaigns fought in 1919–20 to defend the newly established state of Poland against a variety of opponents, the Polish air

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